Coffee With a Wandering Mycologist
Stories from Larry Millman's Mycological Explorations
In mid-October, I had a chance to sit down with the ethnomycologist, writer, and overall mycological renegade: Larry Millman. He was in town to lead a mushroom walk for the local library, so we sat down for coffee and he regaled me with stories of his travels around the world in search of mushrooms and the people that interact with them. Larry left a life in academic institutions to pursue one as an author and ethnomycologist (someone who studies how different peoples and cultures interact with mushrooms).
He and I only met earlier in the year, introduced by Nathan Wilson, and before we really got to talking, I wanted to make sure he knew who he was dealing with. “I’m not a real journalist”, I said as I clicked the record button on my cellphone’s voice memos app.
This declaration also explains why our conversation frequently left mycology and veered down tangents like whether the one-legged house sparrow that landed on our table a few times the same bird, or is there potentially some ecological pressure in the population of house sparrows at the Pie in the Sky Cafe & Bakery in Woods Hole, MA that might make having one leg advantageous? A sympathy factor where patrons would give you more crumbs? While it was stimulating food for thought, it wasn’t necessarily focused, and certainly wasn’t mushroom related.
Despite my journalistic shortcomings, we still achieved sustained stretches of mushroom banter. Larry’s life obviously can’t be distilled down into a blog, no one’s can, but I think we can all learn from and enjoy some of his stories.
Early Years
Larry grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and his introduction to the natural world started in his early youth. His mother was an avid naturalist, friends with the daughter of Aldo Leopold, so perhaps it was genetic that for as long as he can remember, Larry has always been interested in the outdoors.
Though growing up in the middle of the country, his first natural interest was in seashells. He was particularly interested in finding shells that weren’t listed in the field guides, the uncommon and understudied, because as he says, “I felt myself to be outside the human guide book”.
The first time he camped in his parents’ backyard, at age 11, his father called him a “dirty little Thoreau”. Larry took this as a compliment, but his mother was not nearly as enthused. She was concerned that Larry was autistic and made him see a therapist. Larry wasn’t too concerned about a potential autism diagnosis, he just thought autism was the clinical term for people who hate cars. He says most of what he remembers from that childhood therapy were the fish in the tank at the therapist’s office.
Sure, he was a mud-laden kid who didn’t show much interest in washing off, but not many boys are keen on hygiene. The biggest divide between Larry and the other boys his age was his disinterest in cars. Disinterest might be an undersell, abhorrence might be more appropriate.
While kids his age were tinkering under the hood and counting down the days until they could drive, Larry found that he was better able to see everything he wanted to see if he wasn’t encapsulated in a metallic shell, zooming down the road at an inhumane pace. In fact, he purposely failed his driver’s test (but after arm-twisting from his folks, and the threat of a withheld allowance, he went back and begrudgingly passed the test).
The automobile aversion is a microcosm of his outdoor inclination, and by extension, his lifelong interest in people who live by their own wits rather than relying on mechanical means. “Mechanical objects, the internet, television, they don’t agree with me”, he said (his forthcoming book is entitled Luddite Lexicon).
After an undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, he got his doctorate from Rutgers and a subsequent teaching position at the University of New Hampshire (go Wildcats — although Larry would probably want me to add that all the mountain lions have been extirpated from the eastern US and now mascots are all we have left).
He quickly grew fatigued of the rigid structure of academia — he describes himself as a “POW of academic institutions” — and actively sought out the opposite. This landed him in the west of Ireland where he spent time documenting the oral stories and folk traditions of the rural inhabitants. This cultural immersion led him to his first book, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination, with Our Like Will Not Be There Again: Notes from the West of Ireland.
Mushroom Inception
It was a warm, humid night in North Carolina when Larry’s girlfriend at the time told him to come outside her family’s cabin. After his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a faint, blueish green glow emanating from a cluster of mushrooms. He’d known of Foxfire, the glowing rhizomorphs (mycelium, the body of the fungus) of Armillaria (honey mushrooms), but this light was coming from an actual mushroom. He dried the mushroom and brought it back to Boston, where he showed his mycological mentor, Elio Schaechter. Elio identified it as a Jack O’Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus illudens) and Larry was hooked.
Larry says his fascination with mushrooms spawned not just from this one luminescent moment, but from several sequential awe-inspiring interactions with fungi. The glowing Jack O’Lanterns to all the mushroom folklore he learned during two decades of trips to the arctic. Particularly, Elio instilled in him an appreciation for the smaller mushrooms, the peculiar and overlooked fungi, and not just the large, fluffy boletes that are picked for the dinner table.
Ethnomycology in the Arctic
After his time in Ireland he returned to academia for a two-year teaching position at the University of Iceland where he didn’t find much fungal lore outside that the Icelandic had names for stinkhorns which referenced male genitalia. These associations seem to be transglobal because when Larry spent time with headhunters in Borneo (An Evening Among Headhunters, 1998) he found they referred to stinkhorns as the penises of their decapitated victims.
While Iceland didn’t produce much mushroom lore, it did give him a foothold into Greenland and the Canadian arctic. The Greenlandic Inuit had a tradition of using a puffball (Lycoperdon molle) as a styptic to stop bleeding. They’d harvest the mushroom when the inside was filled with powdery spores and use the spore mass (the gleba) for antibiotic properties and styptic capabilities.
The Inuit would also burn both the Tinder Conk (Fomes excavatus) and Phellinus igniarius as a smudge to hide their CO₂ from the ravenous black flies and mosquitoes that plagued them in the summer months. Larry said these mushrooms, which are both found in northern New England, also make a great incense.
The indigenous Cree in Northern Canada brew a tea with the Birch Polypore (Fomitopsis betulina) that they use to expel intestinal worms. After having a sip of the bitter tea, Larry asked one of the men why they drink it, to which the man responded with, “Well, I don’t like it, but I’m assuming my worms don’t either.” Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300 year old frozen, mummified corpse found in the Alps, was also found with this mushroom and scientists hypothesize he was using it for the same reasons.
Despite using mushrooms for practical purposes, not much mycophagy (mushroom consumption) occurs among these northerly peoples. One reason has to do with the hermit-like folk monster, Qivittoq. Aside from serving as a deterrent for kids who might be inclined to misbehave, lest they want to get snatched up by the spirit on a cold, dark night, the Inuit also believed Qivittoq had a penchant for using mushrooms as soap.
In cooler climates, mushrooms will produce a viscid, liquid coat on their cap which serves as a protectant against cold (Hygrophorus are an example of these slimy, cold weather species). An ideal soap if you’re a supernatural entity. The Inuit avoided eating mushrooms because they did not want to upset Qivittoq by eating his soap, but also serving the local folk monster’s cleaning products for dinner isn’t the most appetizing prospect.
The Inuit in the Canadian arctic refer to some mushrooms as Anaq. According to Larry, this translates to “shit”. While some fungi do specialize in digesting dung, this is not what the Inuit are implying here. They have a belief that mushrooms are spawned from the debris (or shit) of shooting stars. A shooting star crosses the sky, the tail (the trail of detritus following behind) is thought to fall to the ground, and the next morning mushrooms are popping up where this cosmic manure landed. Another instance where it’s not necessarily the most enticing to invite your neighbor over and serve the shit of the stars.
Larry noted that with globalization, a lot of these traditions and stories are going by the wayside, and he felt it an important duty to document as many as possible and save them for posterity.
Life as an Author
After finally graduating from teaching positions at various universities, he began to make a living as a nomadic travel writer for various outdoor and travel magazines. He lived a bit like a snow bunting and would summer near the arctic circle and then winter in northern New England.
He continued to publish books as well. Larry’s written 23 books. His favorite is Outsider: My Boyhood with Thoreau, published in 2024, which documents his life and includes many of his philosophical musings.
He also makes time to publish some of his abrasive, controversial opinions which don’t always sit well with other folks in the mycological world — including a particularly unpopular one about dogs. Though his opinions can be coarse, he’s generous with his knowledge and has been active in local, national, and international mushroom organizations for decades.
He also contributed to fungal science when he found a peculiar polypore mushroom in Puerto Rico and brought it back for examination by his friend and polypore expert, Leif Ryvarden. Leif determined it was a species new to science, and he named the fungus Inonotus millmanii in honor of Larry.
Take a Walk With Larry
At the end of our conversation, I asked Larry if he had any advice for people that are just starting to get interested in mushrooms. What can help fan their flames? He said to focus on the substrate which mushrooms can grow on, and not just wood. If you see pine resin or bird feathers, go see if you can find small fungi growing on it. Also, look for mushrooms year-round, they don’t all go to Florida in the winter as he likes to put it.
He taught me that you can find little ascomycetes (small cups or bumps on wood) more often in the winter and spring because they’re not as good at competing for nutrients as the larger basidiomycetes (cap and stem or shelf-like mushrooms). These ascomycetes have carved a niche where they’re more active in the winter when the larger mushrooms, those we see in the summer and fall, are dormant. These ascomycetes produce a soft rot that creates a surface-level decomposition and that’s why they can also be more difficult to remove from wood.
If you want to learn more about ethnomycology and the lesser-seen fungi (or just take in some of Larry’s quirks), you can read one of his books, check him out at his website, or come out to the Cape and join him on a walk. He’ll be leading a walk for the Cape Cod Mycological Society on February 7th, 2026, and I’ll send out more information closer to the date. Until then, opt for your two legs over four wheels and be curious — inspect the blades of grass, the grains of sand, the feathers of birds — because awe-inspiring life is there waiting for us.
References:
I thoreauly enjoyed this article;)
There are a lot of interesting details here about people from northern regions and definitely some LOLs. I appreciate his reminder that fungi don’t head for FL in the winter. I saw lots of Turkey tail today while bundled up on a short walk.